“Man the topsail halliards!” then sang out the captain, and with a cheery cry the yards were run up with a will and the halliards then belayed.
“Sheet home!” was the next command, whereupon the sails were stretched out to their full extent, swelling out before the off-shore wind; and one of the men, by the captain’s orders, now going to the helm, a few turns of the spokes brought the vessel’s head round.
“Now, look alive there forward and heave up the anchor!” shouted Captain Miles.
In another minute the stock of the kedge showed above the bows, when the catfalls being stretched along the deck, and laid hold of by Moggridge, the rest of the crew tacking on after him, the flukes were run up to the cat-head to a rhythmical chorus in which all hands joined, the men pulling with a will as they yelled out the refrain—
“Yankee John, storm along! Hooray, hooray, my hearties! Pull away, heave away, Hooray, hooray, my hearties! Going to leave Grenada!”
The clew-garnet blocks now rattled as the main-sheet was hauled aft, when, the broad sail filling, the Josephine paid off before the wind; and shortly afterwards she was making her way to leeward towards Saint Vincent, passing almost within a stone’s throw of Fort Saint George, as she cleared the northern point of the harbour and got out to sea.
The jib and flying-jib were now hoisted as well as the topgallant-sails and spanker, to get as much of the breeze as we could while it lasted, so that the vessel began to make fair progress through the water; and the hands under the superintendence of the two mates were then set to work coiling down ropes and getting in the slack of the sheets as well as making things ship-shape amidships, where the deck was still littered with a good deal of cargo that had not yet been properly stowed.
I was all this time standing by the side of Captain Miles on the poop, alternately looking at the men jumping about the rigging like monkeys and at the fast-receding shore, which, as soon as the sun set, became dimmer and dimmer in the distance, until it was at length finally shut out from my gaze by a wall of mist.
“Fo’c’s’le ahoy, there!” sang out Captain Miles presently, when it began to grow dusk.
“Aye, aye, sir!” responded the voice of Moggridge, the boatswain, from forward.